Wheeling Around
by pellaz
Summary: Sanzou is different from Konzen. He wants to live.


"What holds you to this world, Genjou Sanzou?"  
  
She said this as she leaned over him, hands clasped behind her back, head cocked in a measuring manner - as a farmer does, when deciding which chicken will gather him the best price at market. She looked at him holding his own guts in his hands as she would at a fly, or perhaps an animal dying in the middle of the road as the vultures wheel overhead. She looked at him in a way she knew would irritate him.  
  
It hurt to gather the air to spit words out, but anger was enough to shape them and let them fly out from his lips. "Nothing, you bitch," he said; "what makes you think I'm afraid to die?"  
  
She leant down, head still cocked, eyes straying briefly to the blood seeping over his hands, settling in the cracks of his knuckles and the lines in his palms. "Genjou Sanzou," she said, "that isn't what I asked you."  
  
It hurt to breathe. He stopped for a moment, then drew in a shuddering breath that jarred his stomach and let more blood ooze out. "I don't know what you're asking." Little more than a whisper, words on a dying breath.  
  
"You do." She reached out and touched the sutra, burnt and spattered with blood, tangled in his hair. "Is it this?" she pressed, twining its edges around her finger. "Is this what makes your heart beat? Can you die now, Genjou Sanzou?" Then she touched his forehead, lips pressing together as her nails brushed across his eyebrows and over the bridge of his nose. "Tell me what you've learned."  
  
The rest of his body didn't want to breathe, now; his fingers were going cold, limbs stiffening, breath pausing and hitching and the blood oozing more slowly from his stomach. Some strange part in him wanted it to come out faster; the gushing flow it had started as had meant, at least, that he was still alive. Sanzou dragged in a breath, dug his fingers into the ground, scrabbling for air. "I," he rasped, and paused to take in another short fast breath, "need to live. I...."  
  
"You want to live." Her fingers trailed down his cheeks and pinched his chin, tilting his face up. Her face swam before him, blurred to a colorless and featureless mask: slit of eyes, slash of mouth.  
  
"And that, nephew - that is all I ever wanted you to say."  
  
----  
  
His belly was still bleeding as he walked through the palace of GyuuMaOu, leaving a trail of red behind him (not that he'd need to find his way back); his fingers were still cold, vision blurry; but he couldn't really feel the pain anymore.  
  
For once, he was glad Hakkai wasn't here. Bad enough to be seeing the man in his head, with his lips thinned disapprovingly, brows slanted down and saying, "Now, Sanzou, not all pain is bad, you know." But Sanzou had always preferred not to feel pain. Some children would pick at their scabs or poke their wounds in fascination; not him. Koumyou had always laughed at him when, while his small scrapes and bruises were being cared for, he would look away or close his eyes until everything was bandaged or stitched up, all hidden from view.  
  
The halls were very dark; only his hand on the wall told him that he was following a pattern of sorts - two right turns, a left turn but, for the most part, straight. Soon - he hoped - there would be stairs. Funny how the villains always told you exactly where they were holding hostages, at the same time they told you their master plan.  
  
And then there were stairs, and he almost fell down them but managed to catch himself on the wall. His fingers were so cold, the warmth of this wall was a shock, not quite burning, more of a sting; but enough to call attention to the numerous small hurts in his body besides the one in his stomach. Sanzou gritted his teeth, curled his fingers together and began picking his way down the stairs.  
  
It wasn't so different from the first time, after all; the first time had been on a mountain, cold air freezing his limbs and settling wetly on his hair - blind to anything else but the voice in his head, he had stumbled up the steep paths and through the freezing rivers until he had come to that place, the place where the voice had finally stopped and large eyes, startingly golden, inhuman, had looked into his. Now he stumbled through the unlit basement, splashing through water and blood, stepping over bodies, following the light, quiet flow of words in his head - caught again, captured, can't do that, let me out, don't belong here, belong up there up there with the sun - and the panic thudding his heart against his ribcage, panic over the darkness, over being trapped in this place where the sun's light didn't reach and never would.  
  
And then: it stopped. Just as suddenly as it had the first time, cut off in the middle of a thought, the golden flavor in his head disappearing. Sanzou sank down heavily, not caring about the blood pooling in his sandals and seeping in through his robe. He stared ahead at the face gazing at him, eyes fastened on him.  
  
Gokuu's voice was different now, a bit deeper, slower and more thoughtful. "You look different."  
  
"So do you," said Sanzou, and had to quirk a smile at how understated it was. Gokuu's long hair spilled out through the bars of his cage, and his long fingernails scraped against the metal as he shifted.  
  
Gokuu's eyes - so alien at the start, Sanzou wondered exactly when they had become as familiar to him as his own - widened, and he leaned forward, reaching a hand out through the bars. Not close enough to touch, and he let it fall back after a few seconds of stretching. "You're hurt."  
  
"Yeah." The reminder made the wound twinge; Sanzou quenched the feeling and maneuvered himself a bit closer, close enough for Gokuu to touch this time. Long nails scraped the back of Sanzou's hand, Gokuu's eyes narrowing with concentration as he scratched off dry, flaky blood. "You?"  
  
"No," said Gokuu. "Just stuck."  
  
"I noticed."  
  
"Gojyou and Hakkai?" Gokuu almost whispered it.  
  
Sanzou shook his head, remembering Hakkai again - that disapproving face, always judging him, Sanzou just what are you doing? - and Gojyou - the last thing they'd done, he remembered, was fight over who would get the last cigarette.  
  
Gokuu nodded, closing his eyes then opening them into little slits. He still scratched at Sanzou's hand, determinedly removing all the blood. "But you're here."  
  
"Yeah," said Sanzou. "I'm here."  
  
He disengaged his hand from Gokuu's and reached out, wrapped his fingers around the bars. He couldn't feel them but he could see them disappearing, and the flash of Gokuu's teeth, long and sharp, when they were gone.  
  
"Sanzou!" Fingers pressed into his arms and Sanzou started awake, casting about in darkness for a bit before his vision cleared and he saw Gokuu leaning over him, eyes wide. His face was streaked with blood; Sanzou looked down and saw more splattered over Gokuu's chest. "Sanzou...."  
  
"Don't worry," Sanzou said, speaking carefully, slowly. "It's not your blood, stupid."  
  
"I know." Gokuu smiled and bent a bit closer, hair brushing against Sanzou's shoulders. He reached out and touched Sanzou's forehead, then drifted his fingers through Sanzou's hair. "You know," he whispered, "you're the only bright thing in this place."  
  
"That's because there's no light here." Gokuu's hands in his hair was comforting, a slow soothing motion - like the flow of Koumyou's voice. He wanted, so badly, to close his eyes.  
  
"No," and Gokuu's voice quavered. "I mean everywhere, like."  
  
Sanzou blinked, and Gokuu's face came into brilliant focus - the blood, bright against his pale face; the shine of his eyes; the tight set of his lips. He wet his lips, dragged in another breath to speak against an explosion of pain. "You know - I'm not the only bright thing around." Gokuu shook his head. "Remember that, Gokuu."  
  
"You remember!" Gokuu's nails cut into his face, dug into his cheekbones; then they relaxed and slid back up into his hair, stroking again. "I'm not the one who's going to forget. Okay, Sanzou? Don't forget me. Remember - remember Hakkai and Gojyou... and me, because you are. You're my sun. There's nothing as bright as you."  
  
He tried to move his lips, to form words, but they were stuck in his throat, growing heavy like his eyes. I didn't ask for that, he wanted to say - and then, as Gokuu's fingers stroked down his cheeks and over his lips, he wanted to say: But it's all right, anyway.  
  
----  
  
The living quarters of the Goddess of Mercy, Kanzeon Bosatsu, are large and spacious. They look, Konzen thinks, almost like gold; there is a definite sheen to them and a sense of heaviness--pretty, no doubt, but with an underlying coldness. Flowers bloom in one corner, lotuses that Kanzeon does not grow hirself, and a chess set made of platinum and ivory lies abandoned on an old oak table. It is at this table that Kanzeon Bosatsu hirself is seated, two fingers idly moving a pawn back and forth on the board. Konzen stands still for a moment and lets himself see hir as others might: the long lion's wave of black hair that spills down hir back, the slim but strong arms, banded with gold like his own; and he imagines the set of her face, the long lazy eyes and the cruel mouth. Cold, he thinks, and ultimately uncaring. Kanzeon had been human once, but no longer.  
  
Courteously, he closes the door behind him. Kanzeon's head tilts and turns toward him, and his aunt says with a smile, "Well, well, late, aren't we? Come in, nephew. Have a seat."  
  
Konzen pulls back the chair she offers him and folds his hands on top of the table. For some reason his eyes linger on her nails; she's cut them, he thinks suddenly, to the length of his own, though they're still colored. "Good evening, aunt," he says.  
  
"Good evening, Konzen." Se moves a pawn, then slides the chessboard around so that it faces him. "Your move. Do you think you can beat me tonight?"  
  
Konzen does not dignify that with a response, only moves a pawn and slides the board back around. He clasps his hands together, pressing his nails against his knuckles; then unclasps them and taps them in a fast rhthym across the tabletop. He isn't watching Kanzeon's next move.  
  
Hir fingers pause over the board; then se, too, clasps hir hands together and sets them on the table. "Let's not play tonight," se says, and Konzen looks up, startled. "You're not paying attention. Not that you ever do, of course."  
  
"Of course I pay attention. I want to beat you, don't I?"  
  
"No," says Kanzeon, "I don't think you really do." Se tilts hir head and sets hir chin on hir long fingers, pressing jewelry into hir cheek. "Don't worry. When you want to win - " and se smiles a lion's smile, predatory and full of teeth. "Then we'll play again." Se twirls a pawn, knocking it over, and it rolls and twists on the board, a fast black blur against its still ivory perfection; it finally comes to a halt to rest, upright, against the queen. "Another round, some other day, Konzen."  
  
----  
  
The sounds of children's laughter hung heavy in the air, like a thunderclap. Gokuu tilted the brim of his hat to cover his eyes and turned towards the children, setting his back to the sun; they were in a group on the street, throwing stones and flinging handfuls of mud at each other. One child was clearly winning; his face was set in a determined queue as he dodged rocks and mud and arrowed each child with small pebbles, with deadly aim - to an elbow, to an ankle, to a cheek.  
  
The children paused in their play as Gokuu stepped up to them; several backed away, faces wary, as all faces seemed to be now. But the winner stared at him with a look of frank curiosity. "You stink," he informed Gokuu. "Where the hell did you come from, a swamp?"  
  
Gokuu grinned, kneeling down so they were face to face. The child's eyes weren't violet but a bright blue, specked with gray clouds and lightning bolts. He wrinkled his nose at Gokuu. "What's your name?" Gokuu asked.  
  
"Shuuei," said the boy fearlessly. He pointed up to Gokuu's hat, then leaned around him to see the long braided tail against Gokuu's back. "Only youkai have long hair. What're you hiding with that hat, pointed ears?"  
  
"What if I am?"  
  
"Youkai!" shrieked a child, and the cry was taken up. Shuuei turned around and scowled at his comrades. "Oh, shut up, Emba. What are you, three? Youkai don't come around here anyway."  
  
"Shuuei," Gokuu said, rolling it around his tongue, and Shuuei turned his frank stare back on him. "It's nice to meet you."  
  
For a moment, Shuuei's stone face showed a small crack - an uncertain tilt of the eyebrows, a less sure frown. Then he snorted, lifted his arms to cross over his chest. "I don't give a damn what your name is. If you're really a youkai, you'd better get out. If not, my mother owns an inn. Get lost or follow me." Without waiting to hear Gokuu's response, he shoved his way through the crowd of children and slunk into town, hands deep in his pockets. The sun caught his hair and glinted off it, throwing bars of gold light behind him, nearly touching Gokuu's feet.  
  
Gokuu grinned, wiped his hands, and stood. The other children stared at him; he wiggled his eyebrows and curled his fingers into claws, and pretended to pounce. They scattered.  
  
When he got into the village, Shuuei was waiting at the gate; he jumped up when Gokuu paused next to him, and looked away, sniffing and giving Gokuu a sidelong glance. "Are you really a youkai?" he muttered as they walked through town, occasionally pausing to wave to people Shuuei knew.  
  
"Yeah, maybe." Gokuu tilted his head. "That bother you? What are you, a scaredy-cat?"  
  
"No," Shuuei snapped. "What are you, ten?"  
  
"Actually, I'm six hundred."  
  
"Get out of here." Shuuei's lip curled. "Here," he said, pausing at the door to a large house - the banner over it read 'Inn,' and 'Vacancies - Come In!' "And you better not bother my mother, either. You look like a real weirdo." He kicked open the door and troped in, glancing once over his shoulder to see if Gokuu were following. When Gokuu grinned at him, he snorted and lifted his nose into the air.  
  
Shuuei, Gokuu said to himself, watching as that blond head disappeared into the kitchen. He ran over the mistrustful eyes, the stone glares, the brusque speech; and smiled ruefully to himself. Some things never changed.  
  
"Hey!" Shuuei yelled from the kitchen. "Are you going to stand there all day or book a room, you dumbass?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah." Gokuu bit down on a grin and set his things in a corner of the room. He straightened, brushed dirt off his hands, and, heading into the kitchen, glanced at the window. The sun was setting, filling the room with orange-yellow light, the color of mixed blood and blond.  
  
"Yo," he called into the kitchen, "I'm Son Gokuu. Can I stay here for a while?" 


End file.
